


First Frost

by Bazylia_de_Grean



Category: The Lord of the Rings Online
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-05
Updated: 2018-04-05
Packaged: 2021-03-06 15:06:51
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 484
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26180872
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Bazylia_de_Grean/pseuds/Bazylia_de_Grean
Summary: An elven lore-master mourns the fall of Edhelion.
Comments: 1
Kudos: 2





	First Frost

The air is crisp, the chill biting, and the deep breath hurts her throat and lungs, but she welcomes the discomfort. It reminds her that she survived, that sometimes the end of one road is the beginning of another; that there are many things which must be taken care of; that it is too early to go to the Havens yet. She shivers, but she is grateful for it – that sharp cold which is not quite a scent is the smell of _life_.

In a way, it is a more powerful reminder that the bustling of the dwarven settlement around her. The shadow of what happened so recently still is hovering over Thorin’s Hall, but there are merchants and stoneworkers and guards, and even a few of her kin. Yet all of them – even the long-lived Eldar – seem so small and fragile against the mountains that are the very bones of Arda. The shapes of the lands change, but the rock and the earth and the water remain, in one place or another. That is something the Naugrim understand, too, in their own way – perhaps, on some level, even better than the elven lore-masters – that the land in a living, breathing thing. Here, in the long Ered Luin winter, it breathes in frost.

She looks up, at the peaks and snow that veil the ruins of Edhelion. Part of her wishes to go there one more time, to say the last goodbyes – to say farewell. But the scholarly, reasonable part knows that it would only cause her more pain. Better to leave everything behind, to forget; to let her heart lie buried there, along with her past and innocence. She can still picture it every time she closes her eyes before sleep; the delicate ornaments and gates and arches, the partly-collapsed buildings, graceful even in their demise; can still hear the wind howling in the empty chambers and towers. Only flowers and plants reside there now, growing over the crumbled walls; a soft blanket over broken bones.

Reaching out, she rests her hand on her bear’s side, fingers stroking the thick, matted fur. Quickly, before she can change her mind, she turns away and starts walking. Travelling on horseback would be faster, but this is what she needs now: the vastness of the sky and the silence above her; her own breaths, loud and laboured as she wades through knee-deep snow, and the bear huffing like a pair of bellows. Life in its most basic, and perhaps also the truest form: struggle.

None of her teachers have ever taught her this kind of wisdom, and no books spoke of such things at length, and this – this is the only semblance of a cure she knows. Even after ages of bloody history and living so close to the Edain and to the Naugrim, the Eldar have never really learned to deal with loss and death.


End file.
